


After Death Do We Part

by SallyExactly



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Canon Character of Color, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Female Friendship, Fluff, Found Families, Hugs all around, Mission Fic, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25032367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SallyExactly/pseuds/SallyExactly
Summary: Five ways Jiya and Rufus could have gotten married, and the one way they did.
Relationships: Rufus Carlin/Jiya
Comments: 9
Kudos: 12





	1. The Undiscovered Country

_The steady wind coming off the ocean whipped at Jiya’s dress and disarranged her hair. It was almost cold enough to be unpleasant, but Rufus wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and then it was okay. Better than okay._

_The sunset over the water turned everything orange as they waited for everyone to arrive. It was just a small group. The team, Rufus’s family, Mom. A few work friends who’d survived the explosion at Mason Industries. Jiya’s college roommate, and Rufus’s two roommates from grad school._

_Mason called in some favors to let them use a building right on the shore. They gathered on a deck overlooking the ocean. Lucy was almost invisible behind a giant display of flowers. Far below, the waves crashed and thundered. Michelle officiated; Jiya was vaguely surprised to learn she was a justice of the peace._

“ _Do you, Jiya Marri, take Rufus Carlin to be your husband?” she asked, after Rufus had said his part._

_Jiya smiled. “I do,” she said, and leaned forward to kiss him._

She opened her eyes, and saw the ceiling above her.

One raw wail of loss tore itself out of her throat before she remembered that she was in the new safe house. She clapped her hand over her mouth before any more could escape. Then she rolled over and buried her face in the pillow to muffle her sobs.

Jiya didn’t know how long she cried before there was a light tap on the door. She sucked in a deep breath and didn’t make any more noise.

But the door cracked open anyway. “Jiya?” Lucy whispered.

She sat up. “I’m—”

In the 1880s, showing any weakness had been like jumping into shark-infested water with a giant gash on your leg. She’d saved her tears for once in a while in the dead of night, but most of the time she’d been too tired. She was tough. It should have been nothing to force out “fine.”

But she couldn’t.

Lucy slipped inside and closed the door behind her, and Jiya couldn’t snap at her to go away, because she couldn’t get any words out at all. Lucy perched on the edge of the bed, illuminated by the moonlight, and Jiya looked up at her miserably, because she suddenly didn’t have the energy to pretend anything at all. She didn’t even have the energy to be disgusted with herself when she started crying again. All she could manage was to be quiet. No one else needed to know.

Lucy’s hand on her shoulder made Jiya jump. She turned away and tried to stop crying, but she couldn’t. A wad of tissues appeared in her field of view, and—

Fuck, it was all too  _much_ . Jiya buried her face in her hands. Lucy scooted over and put her arm around Jiya’s shoulders, and Jiya leaned against her.

Lucy’s hand was comforting on Jiya’s shoulder, and on her hair, like Jiya were a kid— or, maybe, her long-lost little sister. Finally Jiya wound down, and sniffled bleakly.

“I dreamt we were getting married,” she whispered numbly.

Lucy caught her breath. “Oh, Jiya.”

It felt okay to say these things to Lucy, because Lucy understood. Jiya had seen the loss in her eyes after that first mission, when she’d told them about Amy. Lucy wouldn’t pity her. Lucy knew  _exactly_ what this was like.

Jiya wiped her eyes, and sat up. “And it was one of those dreams where I remembered that he  _had_ been dead, but… we must’ve gotten him back. I was so happy to see him. I thought back to when we lost him and thought, thank God that’s over.”

Lucy didn’t say a word at first, just pulled Jiya into a hug and let her sniffle against Lucy’s shoulder.

“We’ll get him back,” she finally whispered, fiercely. “We’ll get him back, and you can _have_ that wedding.”

Something painful eased a little in Jiya’s heart. Just a little.

“Is Michelle really a justice of the peace?” she asked when she’d sat up again.

“Michelle? Denise’s wife? No, she’s a psychologist. Why?”

“In my dream, she officiated.”

“Okay,” Lucy said after a minute, “maybe not that _exact_ wedding.”

Jiya snorted, and actually smiled.

She felt ever so slightly better. Grief tried to tell you that you were alone. But it was a liar. Lucy didn’t understand everything, but she understood enough. Jiya reached for another tissue, and wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” she muttered. “I didn’t realize I was being that loud.” Jiya had chosen this room on the end specifically for its privacy. Flynn had the room next to her, and she knew he would have preferred this one, but either he was less intimidating after she’d been stuck for three years with men much worse than him, or he hadn’t even been trying.

Lucy’s room was on the other side of Flynn’s, so for  _her_ to have heard…

Lucy made a vague noise. “I was… up.”

Jiya eyed her, but was too tired to pursue the sense that Lucy wasn’t being totally honest.

“Could you sleep now?” Lucy asked gently after a few minutes. “I can go.”

Jiya looked up quickly.

“Or I can stay… if you want me to,” she added softly.

Jiya looked down again. On a night when she hadn’t cried so hard, she might have felt ashamed of this weakness, but tonight she didn’t have enough energy left for an extraneous feeling like that.

“Back in the past, I shared a room with three other girls,” she said. “It’s just… quiet… here.”

And that was a good thing, because the noise had been street brawls and worse. But it was hard to get used to.

Sometimes she wished it were noisier here. Then she’d have something to distract her.

“We were all exhausted at the end of the day, but we were friends, so… we always talked a little bit before we fell asleep,” she said after a moment, remembering. Those moments were usually the best part of the day. On a good day, one of them was able to make the others laugh. And on a bad day, well…

On a bad day, at least they weren’t alone.

Lucy shifted. “If you want,” she began. “I could… help you find out what happened to them.”

Afraid Jessica had compromised it, they’d fled the bunker shortly after Future Lucy and Future Wyatt had left. Frantically packing, and then unpacking, had taken all of Jiya’s attention and time. She hadn’t had the time to look up the fates of her friends.

And maybe, just a little bit, she hadn’t wanted to.

Lucy misinterpreted her silence. “Unless you’d rather not know.”

Her words solidified Jiya’s decision. “No.” She shook her head once. “I want to know. I already know that they’re dead. Whatever… however they died, I’m going to remember them as I knew them.”

She took a moment to hold the memories gently. Molly, whose ability to quell the worst assholes with a single fierce look Jiya had tried to copy. Sarah, deft with a needle on both cloth and flesh. Annie, the best of them at producing palatable messes from the cheap food they could afford, and also the best at making the rest of them laugh, with her wry one-liners that almost always found their mark.

“Alive,” she added quietly.

“Okay,” Lucy said after a minute.

“Thank you,” Jiya said.

“You did the same for me.”

Lucy’s words hung in the air, a reminder of how much they’d both lost. Lucy gave her a somber smile.

Somehow it helped not to be alone in… all this. Which was good, because it was about all any of them could offer. They were going through hell, but they were going together.

“Thank you,” Jiya repeated, and this time she wasn’t referring to Lucy’s offer to find Molly, Sarah, and Annie.

Lucy reached down and squeezed her hand.

“Would you?” Jiya asked. “Stay, I mean.” The words came out easier than she expected. Like weakness wasn’t quite so lethal, here with her team.

“Of course.”

“I haven’t slept on my own since…” It had been, literally, years. First, she’d shared a room with Rufus; then with Lucy; then with Rufus again; then with her friends.

It had been since that horrible night after the explosion at Mason Industries. She and Connor had been installed in the bunker, but Rufus had been kept overnight in the hospital for observation.

“It’s just been a while,” she said finally.

“I don’t mind.” Lucy’s smile was gentle, and Jiya smiled back, hesitantly, just a little.

“Now, I don’t snore, but I _do_ kick occasionally…” Lucy added, with her trademark wry self-deprecation.

“Do you bite?”

Lucy looked appalled. “Of course not.”

“Then you’re an improvement on my last bedmates, the bed bugs.”

Lucy looked at her a minute. “I’m so sorry, Jiya,” she said softly. “I’m sorry— we didn’t protect you better. I’m sorry we overshot—”

“Don’t.” If Jiya thought about what might have been, it might break her. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

“I’m still sorry you went through that.”

Jiya swallowed. “Thanks,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

Lucy nodded. “Sure. Sorry.”

Jiya looked at her. “Did you just apologize for apologizing?”

Lucy looked abashed. “S—”

They made eye contact, and then Jiya snorted, and then they were both trying desperately not to giggle out loud.

It was over something so  _stupid._ But it still felt good to laugh, just like it had felt good to cry, earlier.

When they regained most of their equanimity, Lucy took the other side of the bed. “Hey, Jiya?” she said sleepily, after a minute.

“Mm-hmm.”

“I draw the line at bridesmaid dresses with big obnoxious bows on the butt.”

Jiya snorted. “Don’t worry. So do I.”

“Oh, good.”

“Night,” Jiya whispered.

“Night, Jiya.”


	2. Reunited

“Explain it to me again?”

Wyatt was annoyed. He’d sprained his ankle on their last trip, tackling a Rittenhouse agent down a flight of stairs. As soon as Agent Christopher had seen him limping, she’d pulled him from the new mission, leaving Rufus, Jiya, Lucy, and Flynn to jump. Now they were back, and, well, Wyatt didn’t do well with being left out.

Which Rufus got? But, also, Wyatt had been sitting here with his foot up while they were running around 1982 Manhattan, so Rufus’s patience was kind of limited.

Lucy came out of the kitchen with a fresh ice pack for Wyatt, and sat down on the end of the couch. Wyatt’s grumpy panda look lightened fractionally.

“I’m particularly interested in the part where we apparently have to cover all your chores for tonight,” Flynn said, from where he was sitting at the kitchen table, _definitely_ not paying attention or participating in any way, because that was totally beneath him.

Rufus put his arm around Jiya’s shoulders. She leaned against him. In her timeline, she’d spent three _years_ stranded in the past, and then had to watch him die, and _then_ had to fight for two months to get him back. Rufus remembered none of that, but he could see the effect it had had on her. Her being a little more cuddly was, like, the least horrifying part.

“After you guys left,” he began.

“While we were breaking into the bank vault,” Flynn corrected him. Wyatt looked jealous.

“Yeah, that. We chased the Rittenhouse dupe into the arena, but…”

“It was full of people and we lost him,” Jiya supplied.

“Some lady took one look at us and said, ‘you two must be here for the ceremony,’ and we said sure because it got us in the door, and she sent us in the direction the guy had gone,” Rufus continued. “There were a bunch of people wearing white. Big cult vibes.”

“Then the ‘ceremony’ started, and we tried to blend in while looking for the Rittenhouse dupe. And follow along so we didn’t get kicked out,” Jiya said.

“You hit me in the face,” Rufus said.

“I gently _tapped_ you on the face because that’s what everyone around us was doing!”

Rufus grinned. “I know.” He kissed her temple. “Then they gave us some wine, and, like…”

“Cult vibe intensifies,” Jiya said.

“Exactly.”

“Then we saw the Rittenhouse dupe leave and snuck after him, so. But I think we got… sprinkled with holy water at some point?”

“And someone congratulated us on the blessing of our marriage, so, we figured out what was going on,” Jiya added.

“Did you find the Rittenhouse dupe?” Wyatt asked, a little impatiently.

“Uh, well, he saw us.”

Wyatt gave him a look like _please tell me you’re joking_.

“But we wanted him to see us,” Jiya added quickly.

“We weren’t sure if we could… take him out on our own.” Rufus felt a little cowardly about that, about being squeamish, and even about his words. Did it make a difference, getting someone else to kill the guy versus doing it himself? But he… he just _really_ didn’t like killing people.

“ _You_ weren’t sure,” Jiya corrected him pointedly.

“Okay, Miss Badass, here, thought we could take him,” Rufus acknowledged, “but I’ve actually been trying to _listen_ to all those arguments about, like, don’t risk both your pilots? So we led him back to the bank, and Flynn took care of him.”

“I killed him,” Flynn corrected him, like anyone in the room had been in doubt. “You’re welcome. And, by the way, next time do you think you could give me a little _warning?_ Before you bust into where Lucy and I are trying to save the mission? Believe it or not, sometimes these goons give me trouble!”

“Sure,” Rufus said. “Next time we’re running for our lives before cell phones were invented, I’ll just use telepathy.”

Flynn rolled his eyes. Right now, Rufus didn’t care. Nothing Flynn or anyone else could say could get him down.

“Were you seen?” Agent Christopher asked.

“Sadly, no. No newlywed pictures.”

“I meant _Flynn_.”

“No.” Flynn looked even more disgruntled. “I stayed out of sight, and the security cameras at the bank were dangling from wires.”

“Good. If Rittenhouse sees you and figures out that you’re somehow traveling on your own timeline? There’ll be hell to pay.”

“Yes, I feel fine, thanks for asking,” Flynn muttered, after Agent Christopher had returned to her paperwork. They— well, Jiya, because she was fucking amazing— had figured out how to travel on your own timeline, under certain circumstances, without any permanent damage. But if you didn’t do it just right… well, it was amazing how fucking miserable you could be and still not have any permanent damage.

Flynn turned back to them. “And the chores?”

“We’re newlyweds,” Rufus told him. “We have serious wedding night business to attend to.” He raised Jiya’s hand to his mouth.

Flynn looked disgruntled. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Lucy, but those ceremonies aren’t legally binding.”

Lucy smiled. “Let them have this.”

Flynn subsided, halfheartedly pretending to grumble.

Wyatt adjusted his ice pack, wincing. “Congrats,” he said. “On your… fake wedding.”

“Thanks.” Rufus took Jiya’s hand, and smiled at her. Her answering smile lit up her eyes.

Jiya squeezed his hand. “We’re going to bed. We’ll see you in the morning.”

“We’ll turn the music up loud,” Flynn promised drily.

But Rufus had way more important things to worry about than his teammate’s attitude. “Great,” he said, and stood.

As soon as their bedroom door swung shut behind them, Jiya kissed him fiercely, pressing him back against the door. He slid his hands into her hair as her hands roamed his back and shoulders and arms. That went on for several amazing moments until they came up for air.

“Hey,” she murmured, pressing a kiss to his jaw.

“Yeah?”

“You wanna do that again in this century?”

His hands wandered down from her hair to her waist, then up her shirt. It took him a second to realize that ‘that’ wasn’t making out against the door. But when he did—

Get married? For real?

He’d be lying if he said he’d never thought about it. Hell, Jiya wasn’t even the first woman he’d thought about marrying some day. But with Sarah, his college girlfriend, whenever he thought about it, he felt this, like, choking sense of anxiety.

With Jiya? He didn’t have to think twice. Nothing had ever felt so right.

“Hell, yes,” he murmured against her mouth. “You want me to get down on one knee?”

She pulled back and kind of crinkled her nose, looking amused. “Aren’t we a little past that?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. But I’d do it if you want me to.”

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I just want you,” she whispered. “Every day for the rest of my life.”

“That…” He swallowed. “Sounds like basically the best plan I’ve ever heard.” He cupped her face in his hands, and kissed the very tip of her nose. Then he kissed her properly. When they finally pulled apart, she gave him a breathtaking smile.

He reached down and lifted her up so she could wrap her legs around his waist. “Bed?”

She kissed the very corner of his mouth. “We’re newlyweds, what are we waiting for?”

He laughed, and carried her to their bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first large-scale marriage ceremony of the Unification Church to be held outside Korea was in Madison Square Gardens on July 1st, 1982.


End file.
